I'M MAKING A FASHION STATEMENT. OK!

In a way not seen since the ’80s, signalling your intentions – virtuous or not – through your clothes is back in vogue. But what, writes British fashion director Lisa Armstrong, is really behind all this megaphone dressing, and since when did our wardrobes have to be woke?

Just when you thought the pandemic had finished causing trouble for the fashion industry – decimating jobs and revenues and instilling in millions of people an addiction to tracksuits that could spell the death of trends – along came the 2021 Met Gala.

This annual parade of fashionistas in their finery known as “fashion’s Oscars” – is in theory a fundraising benefit for New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Guests theme their outfits to the Costume Institute’s pretentiously titled exhibitions (this year: In America: A Lexicon of Fashion) and spend lavishly for the chance to show off: tickets to last month’s extravaganza were approximately $US35,000 apiece and tables from $US200,000 to $US300,000. This is meant to be the crème de la crème of fashion.

This year, though? An event that was inaugurated in 1948 to promote America’s nascent fashion industry has turned it into a joke. The millions around the world who tuned in for some escapist glamour were met with frocky horrors, protest ball gowns and woolly posturing so vapid it made Love Island look like the World Economic Forum. Kim Kardashian dressed head to toe in a black jersey one-piece that covered her face? Exploding headwear galore? The message was categorically go large or go home.

If what we wear is a reflection of where we are – with the Met Gala at the pinnacle – society today must be chaotic, confused and regressing into a disturbed childhood. Many are revelling in the meltdown. Others feel profoundly uneasy.